


Win or Lose, This is the Hand I Play

by 1shinymess (magpie4shinies)



Category: Pet Shop of Horrors
Genre: Gen, M/M, Platonic Romance, ymmv
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 20:12:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2441495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpie4shinies/pseuds/1shinymess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leon finally catches up with D in Tokyo and lays out his cards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Win or Lose, This is the Hand I Play

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sekalaista](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sekalaista/gifts).



> This isn't the first PSoH fic I've written, but it always seems to come back to this. Why do you torment me, Akino? QQ 
> 
> So this was written for the trickortreat2014 challenge, which I hadn't heard of before. I thought it might be fun to try something with such a tiny word minimum. Kind of a chellenge to keep things uber brief? See how well that turned out? Either way, I hope you enjoy this, Sekalaista! Thanks for the lovely prompt.

Leon took in the shop with his stomach doing flips. The decor was similar, familiar to what he remembered of the shop in LA, and the layout was likewise similar but not the same. Well, it was a different building...

The air was mild, the faint scent of incense and animals blending pleasantly. As he realized the scent was there, some of the tension in his shoulders eased. He'd worried that he'd gotten it wrong or been too slow again, despite being logically certain he'd managed to get into Japan under the radar. He'd had inside help, after all. 

“Ah...I suppose it's that time, then.”

Leon looked to the voice and found D had entered the room through a curtained doorway. Leon stared at him for a long moment, briefly arrested. D hadn't changed _at all_ , and while Leon took care of himself as well as he could, he'd started showing the wear of time. Not D, though. He was...as beautiful and alien as he'd been the first time Leon had stepped into his shop years ago.

D seemed to be taking in him as well, if the way his gold and lavender eyes drifted over his face and down his body was any indication. “Hello, detective.”

Leon flinched faintly at that, at the memories clamoring in his mind of all of the times he'd visited the shop before everything had gone...well, more wrong. D's unreadable expression fractured then, a faint curiosity tilting his head to the side. Leon swallowed and turned to the door behind him, flipping the sign and assuming the characters facing out now informed the street that the shop was closed. Then he turned the deadbolt to be safe. He didn't turn back to D immediately, uncertain what he might do now that he was here. He'd left behind the questions of _what after_ when he'd hit his seventh dead end, a hair too slow to catch up with D in London. That had been...less than halfway through his journey, but the question of what he'd do when he found D...that had been something that had never left his mind.

Leon had imagined himself punching D, hugging him, screaming or throwing _him_ out of a window. He'd even, on his lowest days, wondered if he'd have replaced his service weapon by then and might be moved to draw it. He'd had dreams where he'd done all of those things, achingly sad and so angry at the same time that he'd cried and hadn't been sure if it was grief or rage driving them. He'd woken more than once from such dreams damp-cheeked and still uncertain, and now that he was finally here, faced with him, there was _nothing_. His mind was blank. He wasn't sure he was feeling anything at all. _Shock,_ he self-diagnosed, and finally turned around.

While he'd been starting at the green paint of the door, D had settled into a chair and procured tea without making a sound, somehow. Or maybe he'd kicked off a band and Leon just hadn't heard it. He was really off his game today, it was possible. 

D had recovered from his brief bout of emotion, and his face was now once more the faintly pleasant enigmatic stone he'd worn when they first met...and when he'd pushed Leon out of his boat. “Would you like some tea?” 

Leon was drawn forward to the sitting area almost out of habit. Three steps away, his eyes dropped from D's to the loveseat he was sitting on. The pattern on his old chair had been bold, flowers or something, he couldn't remember. The pattern of the new chair was different, and the visible wood was a different shade. 

The table was the wrong shape. The tea set was a different color and the cups were all too small. 

The anomalies pounded on his indifference until it shattered a step away from D. “Damn it! I chase you across the damned globe and the first thing you do is offer me tea? _What the hell, D?_ ”

D's eyes tightened faintly. “Well, it isn't like I can summarily shut down _your_ place of employment, detective Orcot.”

Leon snorted, dragging his hand through his shaggy hair, pulling it away from his face. Keeping his hair trimmed was one of the last things on his mind, but it was long enough now to curl against his forehead irritatingly. “I don't _have_ a place of employment anymore, D! You might be surprised to hear this, but normal people don't like it when you go on maybe-decade long trips across the world without a word.”

D's expression crumpled faintly. He seemed almost...embarrassed? “Ah. Of course, I suppose that was...obvious.”

The surge of anger drained just as quickly as it had risen. D was still D. Leon was the one who'd changed. He reached into his pocket and was pleased that while D tensed, he didn't gesture for one of his protectors to attack. He could probably take Leon in a fight, at this point, considering his magic and apparently enhanced strength and...flying abilities. 

God, he'd been so _dense_ before. But he couldn't really blame himself. The world he'd lived in before didn't have people like D in it, and when it had expanded...when he'd stumbled, like Alice, down the rabbit hole, he'd ignored the Cheshire smiles and physics defying furniture and kept chasing after the rabbit deeper and deeper until he'd thoroughly lost the way back.

Chris's drawing. He'd had it laminated when he noticed it was starting to tear and tried to avoid the pity-filled stairs of the clerk who'd helped him. He'd felt safer folding it up after that, the laminate keeping the folds sharp. He pulled the slick sheet from his pocket and unfolded it, reversing the folds and pulling out the worst of them so he could lay it flat on the table beside the tea set. 

“That's yours.”

D stared down at the picture, eyes and expression lost in his hair from Leon's angle. One hand reached out to touch it, elegant fingers fluttering over the edge of the slick laminated paper before stilling across the nearest figure. He looked back up at Leon then, eyes wider than they'd been, familiar and alien all at once, asking questions Leon had asked himself a hundred times. (More than that.)

Leon cleared his throat and jammed his hands in his pockets. His worn out wallet and a pocket knife he'd procured after clearing customs were in the right pocket, and a lumpy plastic bag was in the left. “It's rude to return presents.”

D leaned forward. “D- _Leon_. I admit you've surprised me. Where is that temper of yours? I thought for certain that you were here for revenge, and I would have to...well. Surely you didn't chase me all over the globe to return this?”

 _Have to what?_ Leon wondered. Feed him to a lion or a Wendigo or something, probably. Standing like he was, he should be feeling more comfortable. It was an aggressive position in reference to D, sitting as he was. Somehow it didn't feel that way, with D leaning forward, gold and lavender eyes sharp. 

Well. He had a point. “I'm pissed as hell,” Leon muttered, looking away and lifting his hair from his neck as an excuse. “You threw me out of a boat _in space_. But you know...I mean, you've got the right to be pissed too. I guess”

D made a noise then, apparently involuntary if his startled expression was any testament when Leon looked back automatically. 

For some reason that made Leon feel better and he crossed around the table and sat, looking over the tray D had laid out. Steam still curled faintly from the tea pot and there were several kinds of cookies laid out as well. His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn't eaten any breakfast and the in-flight dinner had been a long time ago. 

He thought about the plastic bag in his pocket and nearly didn't pull it out. But...hell, what else was he going to do with it? 

D stared at the cheap bag of cinnamon hard candies Leon had set down on the table and then back to Leon, who blushed. “I...don't have a lot of money,” he mumbled. “I know it's terrible, but I didn't want to come empty handed.”

D was quiet for a long moment and Leon didn't look up from the stained-wood of the table-top. 

Finally, D spoke. “Thank you...Leon. Do you still take your tea the same?”

Leon's shoulders eased. “Yeah. Yes, please. May I...?”

D hummed permission and Leon forced himself to only take one cookie while D prepared their tea. Then he was holding the cookie in one hand and the tea in the other. “Thanks.”

D nodded faintly, eyes locked on Leon with startling intensity as he devoured the cookie in three bites and drank the tea in one long, throat-searing gulp. 

His brows were twitching when Leon set the cut down and dusted his hands free of crumbs. “Great. Mind if I eat more in a minute? It's been a while.” He didn't give D time to refuse. “So here's the thing. You're going to have to properly kill me to get rid of me. And I know you don't want my blood on your hands, so. Go ahead.”

D's face had shifted through Leon's brief speech to irritation and then to something that might've been anger, but quickly switched to confusion. “Go ahead?”

Leon waved a hand. “Yeah, whatever you need to do. Turn me into a golden retriever or a goldfish or something. You don't want humans on your ship and I'm not going to leave, so. Have at.”

D choked, eyes wide in brief panic, and Leon leaned forward and slapped his back. “Whoa. You OK?” D took a couple of breaths, relaxing slowly, and Leon leaned back when he was convinced D wouldn't choke on his own spit or whatever again. 

“I...it's not that easy, detective,” D said, eyes distant.

Leon thought about reminding him that he wasn't a detective, but it seemed like he was just distracted. “Well, I'm open to suggestions. I doubt you want to keep having to move your shop every three months because I'm closing again, and I would really like to stop living out of...well, terrible hotels, when I'm lucky. And, you know, not to die.”

D cleared his throat, an indelicate sound that comforted Leon. After a moment, he let out a long breath. “You truly are most perplexing. Why would you do this? Why go through all of this trouble?”

Leon took another cookie and ate it a little slower than he had the first. D's mouth tightened faintly. When Leon finished chewing, he checked his mouth for crumbs and then leaned forward, bracing himself on his knees. D's irritation eased as he also leaned in. 

“Because.” D waited until the pause dragged out awkwardly. Leon sighed explosively. “Because you're...you, OK. I can't explain it. I know you said you don't understand it, but love is weird.”

“Love,” D repeated flatly, eyes narrowing.

Leon met his unsettling stare directly. “Chris is fine, you know. He's planning on the FBI. I don't have anything else tying me here.”

D swallowed. He looked at the tea service and reached out quickly for his cup, but his hand trembled when he lifted it, splashing his sleeve. Leon hissed sympathetically and reached out to pull the cloth from D's skin. It was warm to his fingers, but D's pale wrist didn't appear to be reddening at all when he checked. He looked at D's face to check his expression and got caught in the glare on his face. “Uh.”

“You're the most stubborn, pig-headed, impossible creature I have ever met,” D growled. 

Leon licked his lips and then risked a grin. “Well, that's what you like, right?”

D stared at him incredulously, then appeared to fully process how ridiculous the situation was as startled laughter burst from him and he lifted his free hand to cover his mouth in surprise. Leon's smile widened and he carefully rolled the sleeve up so the wet spot wouldn't irritate D's skin.

D turned his hand to press his palm to Leon's. Leon froze, breath catching as he stared at his rough hand beside D's, with it's deceptively delicate looking fingers disguising their true strength. He forced himself to look up. D's expression was as open as he'd ever seen it – maybe more so than he'd seen before, honestly – and it was somewhere between exasperated and fond. “I can't believe you brought dollar store hard candy.”

Leon tried to ignore the way his own cheeks warmed at the reminder. “Well, if you don't want them...”

D's fingers curled over the base of Leon's palm, nails lightly scratching over his wrist and the back of his hand. “I didn't say that.”

Leon tightened his own fingers over D's hand, eyes pricking with sudden and intense relief and gratitude. “Good,” he whispered roughly. “It's rude to refuse presents.”

D tilted his head. “I would never wish to be accused of poor hospitality.”


End file.
